


All seasons shall be sweet to thee

by kvikindi



Series: Tumblr dares [2]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:49:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kvikindi/pseuds/kvikindi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Combeferre and Prouvaire get, semi-intentionally, snowed-in. (Mysterious Tongues-verse, but can be read independently.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	All seasons shall be sweet to thee

Combeferre opened the door and saw the valise. 

"No," he said.

Some one-and-three-quarters meters above the valise, Prouvaire blinked piteously. His auburn hair was elf-locked, his green coat badly brushed, as though he’d frolicked through desolate moorlands on his way; where one could find desolate moorlands in the center of Paris, Combeferre did not know, but trusted Prouvaire to have discovered. The fine crust of snow that lay on his clothing suggested the request he had come to make. 

"No?" Prouvaire inquired, lowering his eyelashes. This was a conscious trick he employed to make others feel shame.

"Absolutely not."

"But, Combeferre, it’s snowing."

"I appreciate your meteorological observations; nevertheless, my response remains the same."

"But, Combeferre, it threatens to keep snowing."

"Does it? How very improvident."

"But, Combeferre—" Abandoning language, Prouvaire directed at him a look of gentle, desperate pathos. He looked like a puppy begging for a chin scratch. 

"You have your own lodgings. Indeed, they are considerably larger than mine, not to say finer."

"My lodgings are boring, and I find I think better in yours."

"Yes, often while occupying my sopha for hours at a time and being distracting." 

It was a mistake; Combeferre saw so at once. Prouvaire’s eyes flickered to him, full of laughter. Fauxly coy, he licked his lips. “I wasn’t aware you objected to my distractions.” His voice had gone down in pitch, just enough to suggest a certain late-night roughness. “Oh, well, I shall take them elsewhere, in that case. Surely _someone_ will have the goodness to house me, to hearth me, to bed—”

Combeferre silenced him by clapping a hand over his mouth. Prouvaire dragged his tongue across the palm, wide eyes disingenuous. 

"You," Combeferre said, "are dreadful. Incorrigible. Unpardonable. You are the worst—" But he could not think what Prouvaire was the worst of. He lowered his hand. "You may enter. But there are going to be _terms_.”

Prouvaire practically crackled with radiant triumph. He bounced into the room, slinging his valise towards one careless corner and spread-eagling himself across the sopha in a pose of total comfort. “It’s going to snow for _eons_ , I expect,” he announced happily. “Quite like an apocalypse. I couldn’t _bear_ to be stuck in my dreary rooms for days upon days, with no conversation.”

Combeferre pointed a threatening fingers at him. “Terms.”

"Yes, yes," Prouvaire waved an airy hand. "Impress me with your rigor."

"Term the first: there will be no playing of the flute, _in tune or out_ , nor will there be finger cymbals, nor the Turkish fiddle, nor any other instrument, for it disturbs both myself and my neighbors.”

Prouvaire wrinkled his nose in displeasure. “Do drums—”

"Drums are classified as instruments. Term the second—"

"I have not yet registered my objections to your first term!"

“ _Term the second_ ,” Combeferre continued warningly, “—when I am working, you will be silent. Not sighing as you do when you wish to be noticed, nor mumbling aloud as you do when you write poetry, nor interrupting me with questions about elephants. If there is something you wish to discuss, you may say, ‘Combeferre, I wish to discuss something with you.’”

"What if elephants are the topic I wish to discuss?"

"They had better not be."

Prouvaire changed position, rolling over onto his stomach so he could prop his chin on his fists. “You are terribly strict, Combeferre. What if discussion is not what I want?”

"I don’t know what you mean," Combeferre said. He was thinking half-distractedly of a further list of proscribed topics— proposed animal inhabitants of the Paris sewers, mystical Himalayan cities, the role of tortoises in Roman culture, the evolution of cheese— and realizing with a sense of dread and foreboding that he could not possibly anticipate the reach of Prouvaire’s imagination, particularly when confined indoors.

"Come here; I shall explain."

The explanation turned out to involve surprisingly few clothes, and a great deal of insult to the sopha, so that— on Combeferre’s protest— it was transferred to the bed. Which was unwise, Combeferre thought rather hazily, later, for once they were tangled warmly in the sheets it became exponentially more difficult for him to object, despite the volume of work he had intended to complete.

"You," he accused Prouvaire, "are a thief of virtue. You are a Greek horse in the city of industry."

"Am I?" Prouvaire asked with interest. He was draped over Combeferre’s chest, stroking Combeferre’s arm sleepily.

"You come in here, tempting me like a— a thing that is tempting, and prevent me from getting any work done, at all, ever."

"You have a narrow definition of work," Prouvaire said, yawning. "Allow me to enjoy my triumph for a moment, and then I shall help you with your pamphlet on the tyrants of Rome. My Latin is better than yours anyway."

Combeferre said automatically, “That is not true.” It was true, of course, and true also of Greek. Prouvaire had only to look at a sentence to understand it, or so it sometimes seemed, though if you pressed him on the grammar he would become very vague, and say, ‘Oh, I don’t know; now you are boring me.’ In fact they worked well together, when they worked together, Combeferre scaling and detailing Prouvaire’s sketches. But it would not do to tell Prouvaire this; he would become immensely self-pleased.

"Is it still snowing?" Prouvaire mumbled against his shoulder.

Combeferre glanced at the window. “Very much so.” He could scarcely see the air at all.

"Excellent."

"You will be bored here, if you are stranded for long."

"Never."

"What did you bring in your valise?"

Prouvaire’s silence was very suspicious.

Combeferre poked him in the ribs. “Confess, you sinner.”

"My Turkish fiddle," Prouvaire said guiltily.

Combeferre groaned. “I knew I should not have let you in.”

"Come, you know you are miserable without me. You would be standing at your window, sulking, blaming the snow for keeping me from you, and when next we met you would blame me, as though I had some hand in the weather."

"I think you do," Combeferre said. "Secretly."

"Mm." Prouvaire burrowed closer into him, making a noise of profound contentment. 

"Well," Combeferre said to the ceiling. "All right." He was not sure what he was giving consent to. Perhaps he was endorsing a state of events. Perhaps he was merely acknowledging its existence. He brought his arms up around Prouvaire, holding him tentatively, like a child who is learning to hold an animal and does not know yet how loosely or firmly to cling. There were different sorts of children, he thought, and different sorts of animals, and they learned very gradually how to touch one another, how to live together. He considered this. It seemed to him amazing, and amazing, too, that he should have Prouvaire here, a warm, live, lithe wild thing whose auburn hair was currently tickling his nose. "All right," he said again, and closed his eyes against the sight and the whisper of snow falling.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for chiefguideandcenter on Tumblr!
> 
> Title from Coleridge's "Frost at Midnight."


End file.
